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Developing A Biblical World View
PEOPLE GROUPS
If we view the world in terms of nations, then we could say all the world has been reached because there presently exists within every nation some sort of Gospel witness. There are now believers and organized churches in every country on earth. But this is by no means the same as "every tribe and language and people and nation" as referred to in Revelation 5:9.
When Jesus spoke of all the world, He was not referring to nations alone. The term Jesus used when He spoke of the world was the Greek word "ethne." This word means ethnic or people groups. Jesus viewed the world in terms of "all people" or "people groups."
It is easier to understand the present status of the spread of the Gospel if we view the world in terms of people groups. A people group is defined as. . .
". . . a significantly large group of individuals who have a common bond to one another. Such a bond may include like language, culture, customs, and geographic location."
A "people group" is the largest possible group within which the Gospel can spread without encountering problems in understanding and acceptance. Because a "people group" speaks a common language and has a common culture, the language and cultural barriers which often make presentation of the Gospel difficult are eliminated.
There are thousands of different people groups in the world which have been identified to date. Some have as few as 3,000 members, while others are as large as 30 million. Each continent of the world is made up not only of different nations, but of different people groups. For example, on the continent of Africa there are thousands of various languages and hundreds of people groups.
Each nation is composed of people groups. When we realize that a single country like Nigeria is composed of hundreds of tribal groups, we begin to see human differences are far greater than the division of nations.
An example of an individual people group is the Somali people of Kenya, Africa. They have common language, history, traditions, and culture. They are nomadic people, strongly Muslim in religion, who live in remote areas of the Northern Province. They are just one of hundreds of people groups in Kenya.
There are two other terms with which you should be familiar:
An unreached people group is a people group among which there is no native community of believers with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize their people without outside assistance. A reached people group is one with an adequate number of believers and resources to evangelize their own people without outside assistance.